dietxlib published...
Works with a standard Puppy-412-devx dietlibc (v0.31?) and enable you to do quite tiny static linked X11 binaries.
Ex. 9menu compiles to 79Kb (make -f Makefile.noimake CC="diet gcc -Wl,--gc-sections,--sort-common,-s").
dietlibc has recently (20130312) released a new version - I haven't tested that but dietxlib-0.06 works with the previous version 0.32.

Exercising tinyxlib-4.8.0 - which is a tinyxlib born from patched full source of XFree86-4.8.0.

In the image below running 3 different bins of xcalc: Left is normal dynamic linked bin - middle is xcalc from tinyxlib-4.8.0 but merged with 9 other xutilities (xconsole xfontsel xload xmessage xvidtune xclipboard xcutsel xgamma xman) in a multicall binary - and right is single static bin from tinyxlib-4.8.0.

The mcb use 230Kb (or +25%) more memory than the standalone bin - but still only 26% of the memory the dynamic linked bin use.

Hey -- I don't know how earth-shatteringly nasty this is, but a friend of mine found a bug in ldso that (if I'm reading this correctly) affects uClibc, among other things -- which I seem to recall that someone was proposing to use in pUPnGO at one time.

Maybe this is why it didn't work out that way? (or, it's a big nothing and I can't read... that *is* possible, lol)

@goingnuts the mcb will use less on newer kernels due to copy on write improvement ...for each extra process

Edit: I recently revisited my alternative to the 'file' program for getting mime types (and the alternative xdg stuff that rox filer uses) and have significantly improved performance and added type deduction by magic values. I was thinking about patching rox to use it, but I also thought it may be good for rox to fallback to using the extension if its mime type is not handled.... for instance if a .dummy file is clicked it first tries to run application_dummy , but should also try running 'dummy' if it is application/unknown or application_dummy is missing. Any thoughts? If it matters, I have been using rox-0.1.39 mostly, due to its lighter weight, but this part should be compatible with later versions (it does add ~30kb to the binary for the sorted extension tables, but it is 99% constants) I am also patching it to use builtin xpm images for the toolbar and parent mime types (such as image, text, inodes, application, audio, video...) so that it can just be dropped and run anywhere without a bunch of extra files_________________Web Programming - Pet Packaging 100 & 101

technosaurus: Might be that it should run a build-in universal file-viewer if unknown? Any links for the rox-0.1.39 source? I definitely like all your patch goals - much appreciated. Any chance of build-in check if an application needs a terminal to run (sometimes an application causes X to freeze or starts a 100% cpu usage in the background)? Might be worth to maintain the original behavior as well (ex: external images for toolbar).

The mcb is quite convenient for Xaw-hungry apps in terms of keeping size and memory usage down. Found that xman is really handy when offline - xcalendar-3.0 and xalarm-3.06 seems usefull to include in the basis X-environment too. And some of them can be "themed" to look quite nice.